The Wolf Esprit: Lykanos Chronicles 3
Chapter Twenty

“Maximillian insists I shouldn’t rush into that decision,” I said. “He thinks I’m too short and should wait a year or two to reach my full height before I call my wolf.”

Gabrielle shot a perplexed stare at me.

“He said that?” she whispered in disbelief.

A grin broke on my face, and she released a relieved sigh when she recognized the jest.

“What he said was that if I did it today, it would take a century before I might reach my full natural height,” I confirmed. “He didn’t mean it to sound deprecating. I suppose tall people don’t think about that.”

“I was about to ask how many arguments I’ll need to have with that man today,” Gabrielle replied, shaking her head.

“He told me to take my time. Though, I don’t see the point. I feel I decided when I came here.”

Gabrielle seemed to ponder my position, and she rose from her desk chair to walk about the space, staring at everything and nothing.

“What do you think?”

“I think I agree with you,” she answered in time. “I’ve not known many lycan, and only one of them ever shunned their wolf and declined the life it offers. The very idea of such a change harmed him.”

“I don’t understand,” I admitted. “The idea harmed him?”

Gabrielle looked back at me and returned to her seat.

“His name was Dionisio. I met him during my first night at Castello Palatino—”

“I know that name,” I interrupted. “My uncle said it’s the god of wine.”

She smiled, but continued without an answer.

“He was one of the eight lycan who lived there, but he was the only one who appeared old to my eyes besides Sempronio, the lord of the house and the man who became my father. Some were more than a hundred years old, but they looked young, like Max and me. Father appeared seventy, though he was ancient—his visage was the illusion of his slowed age stretching a millennium and a half. Dionisio appeared fifty because he was fifty. He’d never accepted the gift, and so he’d aged like any other human might.”

“But why?” I prompted her again.

Gabrielle smiled at my impatience, but there seemed to be tremendous pain behind her eyes.

“I asked that first thing. I toiled with the same decision you do. Though my initial experience of lycans in their wolf’s form was wonderment, I was a peasant woman, you see. A mutt in the street is more powerful than a mere woman. I’d suffered abuse at the hands of men, even from my human husband. And the ability to wield the wolf’s awesome strength was the most intoxicating proposition you could’ve offered me. But the violence I’d experienced had damaged me deeply. Men intimidated me to the point where I feared looking into their eyes lest I call their violence upon me. Then, to witness the beast’s savagery, bent on cruelties and murder, even for the sake of protecting and avenging the innocent, gave me pause.”

“But what did he say?” I prompted her again.

“Dionisio told me of how he was abused as a child. An orphan, seven or eight years old, he’d grown up in the streets with nothing, struggling each day to stay alive. And one day, a friendly man lured him into his home with the promise of a good meal and sweets, and there he raped him. Of course, being an orphan—having nothing—Dionisio took the man’s hospitality hand-in-hand with his brutal crimes. And in time, this dreadful man rented Dionisio to other men to violate him just the same.”

Gabrielle paused again, and I sensed it was difficult for her to share this memory.

“Those men had seen something in him, Dionisio told me, that a child could never understand about himself. And they exploited it to satisfy their monstrous desires.”

“But he escaped them?”

She looked into my eyes, and I felt such anguish in her mind I didn’t think she could continue.

“Dionisio came of age at fourteen, discovered by Duccio, who brought the newly lycan boy to the castle.”

“Duccio?” I asked, having never heard such a name.

“Alfreduccio,” she answered. “Little Alfred. He wanted to take young Dionisio as his first lycan child, to raise him into manhood, just as Max wishes to do for you. And much like you, the young teenager couldn’t hide his mind’s scars. Too young to filter or seal his mind, the pain of all those cruelties and rapes passed from Dionisio to his new father with undiluted potency, and it sent Duccio into a perfect rage.

“‘Take me to the man this minute, or any one of them, and allow me to destroy them for you,’ he begged his son. An hour later, Dionisio watched his new father transform into his wolf and cut down his son’s first rapist forever. But not just kill the man, Duccio tempered his biting rage to ensure the rapist suffered as much as humanly possible, as much as the monster deserved. And instead of bringing his son relief or the slightest hint of satisfaction at the demise of his rapist, Dionisio’s mind shattered even further.”

From Gabrielle, I saw not only Dionisio’s face from the night he told her his tale, but also his memories. I saw Duccio’s terrified lycan face as he held the shaking fourteen-year-old, soothing the boy’s panicked mind, promising how his suffering was over—that the devil was no more. The gentle words of love and assurance echoed in a fog of stunned agony. The boy was broken—he felt only crippling anxiety and fear. Duccio’s words of love were next to meaningless.

“He couldn’t replace relief in his new father’s embrace or words. Those evil men had destroyed Dionisio’s mind. And the destruction left him so fragile in the face of violence, he refused to have anything to do with it, even to avenge the crimes against himself.”

“But I see him smiling, laughing even, in your mind,” I said with hesitation.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Light filled Dionisio. ‘A man of infinite jest’—he was as sweet to me as anyone ever had been. He taught me how to make wine and how to drink it. He was the first person, oriented as you are, I’d ever known. It was knowing him, loving him as I did, that made the truth of how such people are treated in the world all too painful to accept. Once I became older and watched the violent prejudices against them, I frequently struggled with how to help them. How to save them without exposing their secret.”

“But Maximillian told me I wouldn’t feel fear again once my wolf was free. He said the anxiety and fear would disappear altogether. Didn’t Duccio explain that to his son?”

Gabrielle only nodded, but the pain in her eyes told me it made no difference.

I pondered the idea of how the violence done to a child could break him such that neither manhood nor the wolf’s power could mend him.

“I don’t feel that way,” I resolved. “I’m not afraid of it, not from what I’ve seen of it with my own eyes. If everything you and Maximillian have told me is true, I’d take it today if you’d let me.”

Again, she stared at me in silence. But then something changed in her disposition, and she rose from her seat.

“You’re sure?” she asked, her voice filled with honest concern. “It’s not a choice you can unmake. You’ll live with this advantage and burden until your last breath, whether it comes tomorrow or centuries from now.”

“I’m sure. I will never fear Death as his equal. Nor will I fear embracing him as an old friend when the time comes. Every warning you’ve given sound paper thin to my ears. You speak of the great violence among wolves, and I tell you I’m no less vulnerable from the violence that greets me among humans.”

Gabrielle approached from around the desk and reached for my hand, drawing me up to her. There were tears in her eyes and a smile on her face.

“Your father will be so relieved.”

For a moment, my human father’s face flashed in my mind. But from Gabrielle, I saw Maximillian’s eyes alight with excitement. And for the first time, I allowed myself to replace the two men in my soul. My lycan father would become my real father forever, and the sensation of relief that took me brought such unexpected joy I thought I might break.

Gabrielle, sensing all this, hugged me with elation and held me in her arms.

“Then let us discuss how the transformation will happen,” she said.

“But wait. What happened to Dionisio, then? He must have died by now?” I asked, counting the breadth of years since she was eighteen.

“I don’t know,” she whispered in time. “I never saw him again since that night we fled. He may have perished that night, as so many of them did. Or he may have survived to see other days. I often dream he released his wolf and is still alive today. But my heart doesn’t believe in that dream.”

“And his father, Duccio? Nothing of him either?”

“Of all the lycan of Castello Palatino, he’s the only one I expect survived.”

“Was he very strong?” I asked.

“Indeed. He was the eldest lycan, save our father, Sempronio. It was Duccio who killed Sempronio,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even. “He took our Father’s head.”